“Over the last few days some media have been disseminating fantasiesI can’t use any other wordabout my secret Catholicism, citing my visit to the Sacro Convento friary, where the remains of St. Francis of Assisi lie,” Gorbachev told the Russian news agency Interfax. “To sum up and avoid any misunderstandings, let me say that I have been and remain an atheist.”

Well, that makes matters pretty clear, doesn’t it? Yet I don’t see how Gorby’s re-professed atheism squares with this quote from the original Telegraph story: “It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb.” Either Gorbachev has quickly changed his tune, or, more likely, that quote and others similar to it are simply fraudulent. (Perhaps a deliberate mistranslation?)

Oh well. As Russian Orthodox patriarch Alexei II put i, “(Gorbachev) is still on his way to Christianity. If he arrives, we will welcome him.” And I will never trust the British press on a religion story again.